Marketing @ KlientBoost - The Performance Marketing Agency

Struggling to make your paid ads profitable? I can help.

I've generated $50M+ pipeline (& counting) for B2B Tech and SaaS companies through content marketing, paid search, and paid social demand generation and GTM strategies.

"We've never been able to make paid ads work for us." — common feedback from happy B2B clients.

Some of the leading minds in B2B follow my content for fresh LinkedIn and Google Ads growth recipes.

Right now, I'm leading marketing @ KlientBoost to add $250K MRR using the exact same strategies, principles, & processes we roll out for clients.

Here's how we can help you: 
- Done for you marketing—starts with a free marketing plan
- Fresh growth recipes to your inbox—klientboost.com/kitchen
- Follow me on LinkedIn to learn the latest winning B2B strategies

Got a burning question about B2B paid ads? My inbox is always open too.

LFGTM 🤘

Patrick Cumming

Two years ago, I'd drop a carousel on LinkedIn and get 300+ new ICP followers.

Last week, I posted what might be my most valuable carousel yet and got <50 followers.

LinkedIn is officially pay to play.

The bad news: Organic growth and lead gen just got harder.

The good news: You can stop chasing viral posts. Write for your audience knowing you'll promote it later.

Here's how I'm adapting my approach to the new age of LinkedIn "pay-to-play" social selling:

1. Create a list of the most common pain points your target audience is facing and add it to a spreadsheet.

2. For each pain point, summarize your POV on the problem and the solution you provide to solve that problem. Add these into new columns.

3. Aim for 7-10 common pain points. I call these category entry points. They're the problems your audience faces that move them from out-market to in-market.

4. Write 1-2 posts per pain point. This gives you 10-15 posts targeting your ICP with content that actually matters to them.

5. Publish 1 post per day over the next 2 weeks. Let them build organic engagement for 48-72 hours before promoting.

6. Before you hit publish, add a P.S. section at the end of each post with a short description of your main offer and a link to the offer page. Keep it simple and relevant to the pain point you just addressed.

7. Promote every post as a thought-leader ad. Now, you can push these posts to the exact audience you're trying to reach. Let your in-platform attribution data tell you what is and isn't working, not the organic algo.

I've been piloting this approach for ~30 days to a B2B SaaS audience and we're already seeing a lift in qualified inbound.

We're spending ~50% less to do it too.

If you're only relying on organic reach, you're leaving 90% of your ICP on the table.

The new play isn't groundbreaking, but it works.

It's what we should've been doing all along: understand your audience, write what they need to hear, and distribute it where they actually are.

And if you're serious about making LinkedIn a predictable revenue channel in 2025, you should be testing it.

Who's in?

Here's a fast and dirty way to estimate your optimal 2026 marketing budget, best suited to $1M-20M ARR B2Bs prioritizing demand capture and in-market audiences:

How to Calculate (and Sell) Your 2026 Marketing Budget

I was totally wrong about LinkedIn thought-leader ads.

For most of 2025, I told my followers to only promote organic posts that hit 100+ engagements.

It made sense. Until the algo changed and killed organic reach overnight.

Posts I knew my audience would usually love started getting <50 engagements.

I didn't trust the algorithm to tell me what's good anymore.

So I made a bet that felt risky: stop chasing engagement. Only write content solving marketing-related pain points for our priority ICP.

Marketing leaders at $10-100M ARR B2B SaaS companies.

I knew engagement would tank. I didn't care. I'd put paid behind everything anyway.

Here's what happened when I tested it last month:

Post with <50 organic engagements:
- 14s+ dwell time
- 4.6% CTR

Post with 100+ organic engagements:
- 12s dwell time
- 2.8% CTR

The post the algorithm ignored performed 64% better with paid spend.

This pattern repeated across multiple posts. The data was clear.

Organic engagement is a vanity metric. Paid performance is the only metric that matters because it tells you what your true ICP thinks of your content. That's all that matters.

Here's the new thought-leader ad flywheel I recommend for B2Bs who want more LinkedIn Ads pipeline:

1. Pull transcripts from every first-touch call of closed deals in the last 12 months

2. Identify the 5-7 pain points that come up repeatedly

3. Write thought-leader posts addressing each pain point using PAS or AIDA frameworks

4. Let posts sit for 48-72 hours, then add a soft CTA with a URL

5. Move every post to your thought-leader campaign regardless of organic performance

6. Analyze paid metrics only: dwell time, CTR, and inbound volume

7. Double down on what's working in paid, not what performed organically

We're already tracking a 60% increase in B2B SaaS SQLs vs the previous 2 months.

During November. One of the quietest months of the year.

The takeaway isn't that organic is dead. You can still win there.

But LinkedIn is aggressively moving to pay-to-play.

Stop optimizing for the algorithm. Start optimizing for your ICP.

Better to adopt this now before everyone else does and the law of shitty click throughs catches up.

Every new marketing trend is "the one"... Until it flops.

Work with an agency that doesn't believe in shiny objects—only incredibly well executed marketing.

Here's a no-BS framework to generate more SQLs with LinkedIn Ads, best suited to B2B SaaS companies tired of optimizing for a funnel that doesn't match how buyers actually buy:

The 4-Step Demand Gen Strategy To Increase SQLs

If I was a Head of Marketing at a $50M ARR B2B SaaS expanding into a new market, this is the exact 6-step paid ads play I'd run:

1. Use Ahrefs to analyze in-market category keyword volume in your new market. High volume means launch Google Ads first. Low volume means start with a LinkedIn demand generation play.

2. For Google Ads: Calculate budget by multiplying avg. CPC by clicks needed to hit your demo target using current demo form conversion rates from paid search.

3. For LinkedIn: Build your target segment and calculate budget to hit 80%+ reach and 10+ frequency over 90 days using cost per 1,000 member accounts reached benchmarks.

4. If budget is too tight, shrink your audience. Pick one job title or industry to saturate first. Add new segments incrementally as more budget opens up.

5. Start with creative that's already working in existing regions. Pain points rarely vary much by geography anyway. Scale what performs in the new market. Pause what worked elsewhere but fails here. Test 2-3 new creative angles per month.

6. If you're not seeing booked demos within 2 weeks, targeting is broken. Switch from native targeting to a company account list. Turn off audience expansion. Exclude any job titles who don't fill out demo forms based on historic data.

I ran this exact play for a 5-figure ACV B2B SaaS last year and pipeline was higher in Q4 than any other quarter that year.

That's pretty rare for most B2B companies that aren't in hyper-growth.

Expanding into new markets can feel daunting, but it's actually fairly straightforward when you approach it with data-driven performance marketing principles instead of guessing your way through it.

Who's testing this out in 2026?

—

P.S. Struggling to hit your paid ads pipeline targets? Have a KlientBoost - The Performance Marketing Agency Growth Strategist build your free marketing plan with proven new tactics like this one. It's fully personalized to your audience, industry, and goals.

Hit the link to request yours: https://lnkd.in/ediU_-Ru

Nobody really shares the brutal reality of day-to-day marketing on LinkedIn. 

I admit I'm part of the problem because I share as many wins as possible. It's good for business, okay?

But, reflecting on the last 12 months in this role, it wasn't always easy or pretty.

Here are the 5 biggest and scariest mistakes I made (typos not included). Hopefully there's a few lessons in there for you too:

1. Pulled $10K from Google Ads in April and tanked pipeline. Based on lift analysis, I estimate non-brand Google is driving ~50% more inbound than we can track. You have to validate attribution data with incrementality testing. Tracking alone isn't reliable.

2. Fumbled the KlientBoost Kitchen launch. I thought if content was world-class it would grow itself. Big mistake. As soon as I started promoting it regularly (thanks Kimberlee Meier), views and downloads went up 20X. Btw, don't be afraid to post links, it does work.

3. Didn't set any clear output goals. My logic was if we hire great people, output will sort itself out. The opposite happened. Nobody knew what to prioritise so we worked on 1,000 ideas but didn't ship enough in Q3. We're now aligned on output goals and are shipping more than ever.

4. Didn't act on research fast enough. We interviewed 182 marketing leaders in May and didn't synthesise it into content ideas until November. We're already seeing an increase in LinkedIn-sourced SQLs in Q4 since framing content around the findings. 

5. Could have pushed LinkedIn Ads ROI higher with segmentation. We went broad because most target industries have overlapping category entry points. But, we've realised it's SUPER important for prospects to feel like we get their biz and industry. Segmented campaigns are the best way to show them we do.

6. Spent $8K sponsoring a newsletter and FORGOT TO ADD THE UTM CODE. Seriously, who does that? It was super annoying because we had a HUGE incremental lift in SQLs but I couldn't attribute ANY of it directly back to the newsletter. That would have been EXTRA, important proof.

I'd be lying if I said it was always easy to shake off the mistakes. 

There were moments where it made me question if I was any good or what business I had posting about how to do marketing when I can't get it right day-to-day myself.

But, the truth is, the mistakes ARE part of the process. And, if you're trying to push boundaries, like we are, they're unavoidable.

Just gotta make sure you're always reflecting, learning, and adapting.

🤘

If I listened to what everybody says on LinkedIn, I'd have killed ads that generate the most pipeline.

Our best performing ads break every rule "experts" on here preach:

- Overused "If I was an [insert job title]" hooks
- Multiple em-dashes throughout the copy
- Direct sales CTAs to cold audiences

All things everybody says not to do.

Yet these ads drive more influenced pipeline and revenue than any other format we've tested.

(And only take 15 mins to write too by the way 😉)

The disconnect is real. LinkedIn's loudest voices optimise for engagement and vanity metrics. But engagement doesn't pay the bills. Revenue does.

Most advice you see is based on what performs well in the feed, not what actually converts prospects into customers. There's a massive difference.

This is why data-driven decisions matter more than popular opinion. Test what the crowd says doesn't work. Track it against pipeline, not likes or comments.

You'll be surprised how often the "wrong" approach is exactly what your B2B needs.

Stop letting the loud minority dictate your strategy. Let your pipeline data do the talking instead.

graphical user interface, text, application, email

The traditional funnel framework is broken.

TOFU, MOFU, BOFU assumes buyers move in a straight line.

They don't.

So I stopped forcing campaigns into funnel stages and started building around real buyer behaviour instead.

Now I run two campaign types that match how B2B buyers actually behave:

1. Demand generation campaigns target our entire target audience.

These campaigns have 2 goals:

- Attract in-market buyers in our audience
- Build recall with out-market prospects

Both goals can easily be achieved with the same ad providing it:

- Agitates a painful problem
- Highlights a desired outcome
- Shows a point of differentiation
- Positions your product as the solution

This will only work if you're hitting:

- 80%+ audience penetration
- 10+ frequency

And use strategic messaging backed by data.

That means talking about what your audience is needs to hear.

Not what you want to say.

2. Demand capture campaigns increase ad frequency for in-market buyers.

These campaigns exist to:

- Increase recall with in-market buyers
- Overcome objections
- Generate revenue

Here's how we build them:

Generic retargeting is out.

We only target high-intent behaviors:

- Service pages, pricing pages, offer pages.
- AI-driven intent signals from Dreamdata

Finally, we add strict audience filters to block poor-fit prospects from wasting budget.

We don't exclude active pipeline from targeting either.

We keep reinforcing why we're the right choice until the deal closes.

Because they're not won until they're won.

Funnel stages work great if buyers follow a script.

But they don't.

So we stopped marketing to a model and started marketing to reality.

P.S. I'm running a webinar tomorrow at 10 AM ET / 3 PM GMT walking through this new approach to LinkedIn Ads. Here's the link to sign up: https://lnkd.in/eVwT2E4E

Last year, a client and I hit a wall that made no sense.

We were running LinkedIn Ads to a high-value audience segment. We did everything by the book:

- Matched budget to audience size
- Consolidated campaigns
- Optimized for reach
- World-class creative
- Ran experiments to drive CPM down

But we couldn't push audience penetration past 60%.

That meant 40% of our target decision makers weren't seeing our ads.

It was driving me insane until I realized what was actually happening.

That 40% we couldn't reach weren't actually active on LinkedIn.

So I came to the next call with the fix: expand to Meta Ads.

But it wouldn't work with native targeting, so we needed a different playbook.

Here's what I recommended:

1. Use a 3rd party audience tool to get LinkedIn-level targeting precision on Meta Ads (we use Primer for this).

2. Take any wasted LinkedIn Ads budget and put into Meta Ads. CPMs are cheaper so you probably won't need additional budget.

3. Launch with the top 5 creative from your LinkedIn Ads campaigns. Those are the ads with the highest CTRs, dwell times, and CVRs to pipeline.

We're now recommending that same strategy to all of our clients who've plateaued on LinkedIn Ads.

The best part is you're not restricted to Meta Ads either.

You can take that same audience and target them on Google, Reddit, or YouTube, depending on where your audience is most active.

Next Wednesday, I'm running a 30-minute LinkedIn Live with Primer Co-Founder Keith Putnam-Delaney covering 7 new strategies like this to generate B2B pipeline from B2C channels.

Here's the link to sign up: https://lnkd.in/ebftE7nC

Customer interviews are overrated.

There, I said it.

Most marketers treat them like gospel. But here's what they actually tell you: why existing customers love your product.

That's useful. But it's not the data you need to 10X performance.

Because your customers aren't your prospects.

Your prospects are still in pain. They're still searching. They haven't bought yet.

And that's the mindset you need to understand if you want your ads to drive serious pipeline.

So where do you find it?

First sales call transcripts.

Not the second or third call. The FIRST one.

This is where prospects tell you exactly why they showed up and what they're hoping you'll solve.

Here's a workflow we use to mine that data:

1. Extract a call summary from every first sales call
2. Export the data to ChatGPT (or your fav AI tool)
3. Assess the top 5-7 pains, gains, and jobs to be done
4. Use their exact words to build ad content

We rolled this out for a new campaign targeting B2B SaaS marketing leaders.

We're already seeing a 40% lift in B2B SaaS SQLs vs the previous 2 months.

No extra budget. Just tighter messaging based on what prospects actually care about before they buy.

The best part? This is way more accessible than running 50 customer interviews.

You're already recording sales calls. The data is sitting there waiting for you to use it.

Start mining it today and watch your messaging shift from generic to impossible to ignore.

The biggest myth in marketing is that it takes time.

That's a cope for ineffective marketing.

I put this to the test last month to prove it doesn't take time to make marketing work.

Here's what I did:

- Pulled a list of cold B2B SaaS accounts from Clay
- Created thought-leader ads ONLY targeting them
- Each ad showed how to solve one of the 7 most common pain points SaaS marketing leaders come to us for
- Calculated budget needed to reach 80% audience penetration and 10 frequency in 30 days
- Hammered the cold accounts with highly relevant ads for 30 days

I just ran the analysis and the results were even better than I expected.

7 accounts booked high-intent calls and every single one became an SQL after qualification.

100% conversion rate to SQL.

50% lift in B2B SQLs vs September and October.

Cost/SQL was $925, which was ~40% lower than our typical LinkedIn Ads Cost/SQL.

The CPMs were WAY higher than I expected, so we didn't even hit the audience penetration and frequency goals I wanted. We finished on 60% audience penetration and 6 frequency.

Imagine what we could have done if we had.

The bottom line is that 5% of your audience is in-market and it's almost impossible for you to know who.

When you optimize for this fact and saturate your entire target audience with high frequency you WILL convert cold prospects to booked calls and demos within 30 days.

No nurturing required. No funnels required. No warming required.

Last year, a $1B+ B2B brought us in to run LinkedIn Ads to 200+ high-value target accounts.

We were optimising for clicks and conversions but no matter what we did, we couldn't reach more than 50% of our target accounts.

I pitched them something risky:

Stop optimising for clicks and conversions. Start optimising for reach.

This was considered bad practice on paid social. But, I had a hunch that the algo was prioritising distribution to the most active users. That meant 50% of our audience weren't seeing ads.

I also had a feeling the algo didn't understand the audience well enough to know who was most likely to click. If we ran this strategy we'd not only reach more accounts, but CTR would at least stay the same.

We ran a quick pilot A/B test and results were promising: 14% lower CPM meant we reached more accounts and no change in CTR.

We rolled out the strategy across the account.

3 months later and we'd reached 98% of those 200+ target accounts AND increased CTR from 0.5% to 2%+.

Even better results than we expected. No extra budget needed.

Here's why it worked:

1. We calculated budget using real CPM data so we knew we had enough to reach 80% of our audience with 10+ frequency every 90 days.

2. We promoted product-led content that tackled key pain points target decision makers faced that made them more likely to click.

3. Using the awareness objective set to optimise reach meant we could force the algorithm to push content to more accounts.

4. Because we understood our audience better than the algorithm we created content that increased CTR without needing to optimise for clicks and limit reach.

We're now using a similar process on our own account to reach 80%+ of our audience with 4%+ CTRs.

It wasn't just a one off win. 

It's a repeatable framework any B2B can apply to reach more accounts and generate more pipeline with LinkedIn Ads.

Next Wednesday at 10AM ET / 4PM CET, I'm teaching you the full playbook in a 1-hour LinkedIn live session with Dreamdata CMO Steffen Hedebrandt.

Sign up using the link in the comments 👇

I've shared a new LinkedIn Ads playbook every week in Q4 to help B2B SaaS companies hit their demo targets.

I'm 100% confident the playbooks work. But they'll still fail for many companies that try them.

Not because the steps are wrong. Because the creative is weak.

Here are 7 principles for creating strong ad creatives that drive more booked demos:

1. One message per ad. Don't cram every feature and benefit into one creative. 7 ads with 1 message > 1 ad with 7 messages.

2. Lead with the pain, finish with the gain. People are 10X more motivated to avoid pain than chase gain, so hook with the problem they're running from.

3. Always relate ads back to your product. That's how you build recall so prospects remember you when they're ready to buy.

4. Clear beats clever. If your ad takes more than 3 seconds to understand, it will fail. Leave no doubt about how you can help.

5. Call out the ICP in the hook. This makes sure users know the ad is for them. That gets more of the right eyes on your content.

6. Add a sales CTA at the end. If your content is valuable, prospects won't mind a soft sales message. This works even on cold audiences.

7. Write what your audience wants to hear, not what you want to say. For example, my audience cares about pipeline, so I write about pipeline.

Most companies blame the playbook when campaigns don't work.

But the playbook usually isn't broken. The creative is.

Fix the creative first. Then suddenly the playbooks start working like they're meant to.

I just finished analyzing our 2025 LinkedIn Ads performance.

We spent ~$190K to generate ~$2.5M ARR and ~13X ROAS.

In 2026, I think we can do even better. Here's how I'm restructuring the account based on what worked and what didn't.

Demand Generation

I'm cutting single image ads completely. The avg. CAC was $4.1K which is way too high.

We put the same spend into ungated document ads and got a $1K CAC. I'm pushing 40% of our 2026 budget into these.

Thought Leader Ads and CTV Ads had ~$1.7K CAC so I will put the remaining budget into those formats.

All 3 campaigns used content heavily focussed on showing prospects we could solve painful problems. We knew what pain points to address because we pulled them from 100s of sales call transcripts.

Do not guess this step.

Demand Capture

The same single image ads that didn't work for demand generation worked insanely well here. We had a $58 in-platform CAC.

I suspect you can get away with single images more when prospects are already bought-in.

Outcome-related content worked better here than case studies or testimonials. The ads simply showed prospects avg. ROI lift we get and the % of clients who hit their agreed goals with us.

I will push 60% of retargeting budget here.

Spotlight ads had a $40 in-platform CAC so we will continue to run these. You can get high audience penetration and frequency on these for very little budget, so I'll push 10% of budget here.

Video case studies had a $150 CAC, so I will put the remaining 30% of budget here.

2026 Experiments

I want to test more conversation ads variations in the demand capture layer. We booked a lot of calls from these in demand generation, but conversion rate to closed/won was pretty much non-existent.

I also tried multiple tactics for promoting webinars and nothing has really worked yet either. So, that's another problem I want to solve for.

We saw a very strong correlation between increased LinkedIn spend and increased pipeline numbers. We had the most pipeline in Q1 and Q3 when we spent the most on LinkedIn. And the least amount of pipeline in Q2 and Q4 when we spent the least.

Most B2Bs in the $10-100M range are terrified to run thought-leader ads, CTV, and ungated documents.

Which is exactly why these campaigns crush it.

CPMs are WAY lower for native formats that prospects actually enjoy consuming. You get premium inventory for a fraction of the price of expensive inventory that doesn't work.

If you're unsure how to evolve your LinkedIn Ads in 2026, this structure is your best starting point.

A few weeks ago I posted a LinkedIn Ads strategy to generate more qualified demos for B2B SaaS companies.

I was so confident in it, I launched it on our own account to prove it works.

After 30 days, the results are in:

- 1 closed deal
- 13 high-intent, qualified leads that booked calls with sales

More of those will turn to SQLs this month after they book follow-up calls (usually a 1-2 week lag).

And LinkedIn underreports actual influence. So that's low-balling it.

This strategy was not complicated. It took less than 2 hours total to set up.

If you want to emulate it, here's what you need to do:

1. Build an account list you can fully saturate with your budget

2. Create 7-10 thought-leader ads teaching prospects how to solve painful problems

3. Add a URL that sends in-market users to a demo or book a call page

4. Set campaign objective to awareness and optimize for reach with a 7 freq cap

5. After week 1, kill ads with low landing page CTR and create more posts similar to those with high CTR

It took me around 90 mins to write the posts and around 30 to set up the campaign.

But here's the big caveat.

This strategy will NOT work if the content quality is vague, low-relevance, and disconnected from the problem you solve.

This worked for us because I built the posts around pain points we discovered after interviewing nearly 200 ICP prospects and analyzing hundreds more sales calls.

You can emulate the settings, but if you skip that step, this strategy WILL fail.

But if you get it right, you might find you're back on track to hit those tough Q4 demo targets.

Who's testing this?

CPM is a vanity metric. Track cost per 1,000 member accounts reached if you want more pipeline.

CPM measures impressions. Not unique accounts. You could be hammering the same people over and over while missing new in-market buyers.

I've seen this play out in our LinkedIn Ads account:

Campaign A: $69 CPM, $102 cost per 1,000 accounts reached
Campaign B: $52 CPM, $250 cost per 1,000 accounts reached

Campaign A also had an 4X higher conversion rate to pipeline.

Lower CPM doesn't always mean better reach. It often means wasted frequency.

Here's how to check yours:

1. Go to columns
2. Select delivery
3. Scroll all the way right

CPM and cost per 1,000 member accounts sit next to each other.

4. Sort by lowest cost per 1,000 accounts
5. Cross-check conversion rates to pipeline

If your low cost per 1,000 accounts reached also have higher pipeline conversion rates, kill the "cheap CPM" ones and reallocate budget.

It's not gonna transform pipeline overnight.

But making small optimizations like that over the next 90 days will make it a whole lot healthier.

Fullfunnel.io

At Fullfunnel.io we are growing B2B companies with long and complex sales cycles since 2006.

We were and still are “in trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, and bring to the table our 30+ years of combined experience and knowledge.

I've been selling and marketing B2B tech and services since 2006. 

What makes Fullfunnel.io different?

1. Ins and outs of selling to enterprise

Coming from the mid-market and enterprise world, I know all the ins and outs of selling to these segments: the research and evaluation processes, decision-making procedures inside the buying committee and the approval workflows.

We’ve been there, done that, and know how to generate opportunities with these segments and influence the decision-making processes.

2. Niche experience

While we could help many B2B business, since 2007 we focus exclusively on two verticals: high-value B2B tech (enterprise SaaS, blockchain technology, hardware) and service-based companies (software development, consulting, cybersecurity, DevOps as a service, etc).

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge.

3. Knowledge transfer and in-house operations

We believe that the real growth can only be driven in-house. You need to have people who are in the trenches every day, talking to customers, experiencing the sales hurdles, refining the messages and positioning.

We join your team as external marketing advisors, provide consistent support and training including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack and process maps.

As a result, you get an evergreen in-house growth engine.

Co-founder

Trenches - B2B marketing community

Trenches — a community created by B2B marketers for B2B marketers who are in the trenches every day getting their hands dirty in growing B2B companies with high ACV and long sales cycles.

We talk about ABM (account-based marketing), marketing-sourced pipeline, demand generation, lead nurturing, GTM strategy, buyer’s journey, and all other hot topics that are ignored in the sales communities.

Community is FOREVER FREE.

Co-Founder

6-Week ABM Playbook

An actionable account-based marketing playbook and training to consistently land sales opportunities with your dream clients in 6 weeks or faster. 

Cut through the noise and get busy decision makers to respond to your campaigns without spammy outreach, wasting money on enterprise tech stack or expensive ip-based advertising, and significant shifts in the company’s organization.

The account-based marketing strategy and campaigns we are sharing in this playbook can be executed by a team of 2 people (1 marketer + 1 sales) on a Ramen budget.

Author

Scale XL

Helping B2B entrepreneurs install a reliable process to predictably fill their pipeline with high-value clients. 

Scale XL process addresses the 4 critical challenges of client relationship building:

1. TARGETING: identify, target and engage with more of YOUR business’ ideal potential clients, not someone else’s. 
2. ATTRACTING: define, create and communicate compelling messages that cut through the noise and clearly establish your business as a natural answer to your ideal potential client’s problems.
3. QUALIFYING: qualifying which prospects are ideal for YOUR business and which of them are ready, and then applying different processes to sales-ready leads and those that need nurturing.
4. ROI: fix low return and underwhelming results of B2B marketing 

Scale XL relies on a process to build relationships with more key decision makers in your market by targeting, attracting and nurturing your ideal clients, not someone else’s.

And if your business is anything like 100+ niche B2B software and service companies I’ve helped before, it’s likely that my methodology could help you do just that.

To find out if this process can work for your business, feel free to get in touch here, or visit our website at scalexl.com.

Founder

Lean Startup Circle Brussels

We're a group of entrepreneurs taking lean startup and customer development techniques to practice in our startups. We're ready to talk implementation and share data from our experiments.

http://www.meetup.com/lean-brussels/

Every meetup addresses a different (lean) startup topic (minimum viable products, go to market, sales for startups, customer interviews...)

Most startups fail not because they fail to execute and build their product, but because they fail to build a viable business around it. Lean startup helps us validate our business model as fast as possible. Lean startup is a collection of techniques built around maximizing validated customer learning thought fast Build/Measure/Learn iteration loops.

*The Lean Startup is a trademark and service mark owned by Eric Ries.*

Co-Founder and Organizer

Growth Hacking Belgium

Your new business went online yesterday and you've got a marketing budget of zero. How are you supposed to create a movement around your product? How can you get to your first thousand - or million - customers? Starting from zero, it feels impossible. Enter the growth hacker. You may not have heard of growth hacking yet, but you've certainly used the billion dollar brands built by it: Hotmail, AirBnB, Facebook, Dropbox, amongst many others. This group is for people who want to adopt the growth hacker mindset. It is all about sharing hands-on tactics that bring you results.

Grant Snap

Grant Snap is an online service that helps you get your innovation funded by providing guidance in preparing winning R&D grant proposals.

€375 billion gets granted annually in the EU. Get your share.

Sirris

I help software companies in different phases of product development and innovation:
•	For entrepreneurs: to turn their ideas into viable product concepts by applying customer development and lean startup™ methodologies
•	For companies building product for early adopters: introduce flexibility needed to quickly respond to new opportunities and changing customer requests 
•	For companies shifting their focus from customer to market: to master product management
•	For companies established in a market: to deal with increasing product complexity and how to differentiate through innovation

Account Manager Software Industry

Development activities (middleware components of a distributed data storage system, test management system, framework and tools used for automation of system tests) 

Participating in introduction of agile methodologies in two R&amp;D teams and setting up test automation infrastructure

Senior Software Engineer

Sony

Participating in the transition of an R&amp;D team into a product development organization 

Development activities (several packages of DVB MHP standard for digital television, an integrated environment used for development, execution and automatic reporting of functional tests for digital television)

Setting up a test department (conceiving a test strategy and infrastructure, test specifications/reviews, recruiting, supervising and training of testing personnel)

Full-funnel ABM for B2B brands with 5+ figure deals | Co-Founder @ FullFunnel.io

You need more pipeline that turns into revenue. But:
- Most marketing leads never convert to deals
- ⁠Outbound is in continuous decline 
- All the investments in trendy programs, agencies or tech didn’t move the needle. 

It’s time to try implementing full-funnel sales and marketing programs. 

Why? 

So you can:
- Accelerate this quarter’s revenue while building the future pipeline
- ⁠Convert 5-15% accounts to pipeline
- ⁠Bring marketing and sales teams together to drive the KPI that matters the most: sales velocity. 

We helped dozens of B2B tech companies implement full-funnel marketing and sales programs with 10%+ account-to-pipeline ratio. 

We will take your team by the hand and together, implement a scoped pilot program with clear milestones to prove the key KPIs, before investing in operationalization and scaling. 

To learn more or ask me anything, connect with me here or visit our website at fullfunnel.io



Vladimir Blagojević

No VP of Sales ever said: "I expect marketing to orchestrate our engagement playbooks". 
Yet this is what often happens with ABM:

Marketing:

- Creates multiple sales playbooks & engagement sequences
- Designs timeline
- Add best practices

Then, marketing shares with sales 87-pages deck and asks to implement.
One month later: "Sales doesn't use our playbooks and content".

This year we've interviewed two dozen enterprise B2B Saas VP of Sales to dive deeper into the challenges they want to solve with ABM and get marketing hands-on help.

Here are 5 core areas:

1. AWARENESS AMONG STRATEGIC ACCOUNTS

Awareness is not created by running more ads, drip personalized nurturing and outbound cadences.

Awareness is not created by creating more AI content nobody is going to read.

Awareness is created through the engagement with ICP ecocystem:

- High-quality thought leadership program with SMEs & execs
- Top-notch events
- Collaborations and direct engagement with the target accounts
- Constant engagement with the communities and thought leaders

2. CONTENT THAT CHALLENGES THE STATUS QUO

Modern B2B buyers don't need one more "How to cut your costs" whitepaper. Modern buyers want to see:

- Industry trends and stats
- Concrete practical examples and best practices: dashboards, workflows, templates
- How to challenge an internal inertia and status quo

In most cases, sales don't use marketing content because it doesn't fall in any of these categories. 

3. COMPLETE ACCOUNT ENGAGEMENT

Most organizations use lead handoff as a default function:

MQL generated -> assign to SDR.
Webinar signed up -> Assign to SDR

In 2026 to cut through the noise you need to have a holistic visibility:

- Who engaged with what content and ads
- What were historical interactions
- When was a spike in high-intent page visits
- Which events buying committee members has attended

This way sales move from desperate pitching to meaningful 1-1 account planning.

4. BUYER ENABLEMENT

You don't win deals with fancy pitch decks. You win when your Champion can sell your product at the next internal meeting.

Sales can create business cases showing challenges, cost of inaction, and recommended solutions.

But they need marketing's help with:

- Product screenshots that address specific buyer questions
- Relevant customer testimonials and references
- Data snapshots

5. CLEAR MESSAGING

Nothing frustrates sales more than prospects asking: "But what exactly does your product do?"

--- 

In many organization, sales ignore marketing, don't buy in for joint programs like ABM, and gate-keep access to customers. 

How to fix this:

- Make both functions revenue-responsible
- Get fundamental alignment on GTM strategy (ICP, buyer journey, value prop, metrics)
- Fix knowledge gaps through joint planning, involvement of SMEs
- Define a small pilot team on one market/vertical
- Run regular pipeline review meetings during the pilot
- Document and share results before scaling

Full-Funnel ABM and Demand Gen For B2B Companies w/ High ACV | Co-Founder @ FullFunnel.io

Why Sales Ignore Marketing

Accounts that fit your ICP ≠ buying intent. Instead of wasting SDRs' time and ads budget, segment your accounts into three lists:

1. CLUSTER ICP
= Vendor unaware + Product need unknown

🎯 Goal: Build brand awareness at scale
📢 Marketing: Cluster-based demand gen
🤝 Sales: light touch, <10% of effort (e.g. connect with DMs and Champions)
📊 Opportunity likelihood: <5%

2. FUTURE PIPELINE
= Vendor aware + Product need unknown

🎯 Goal: Validate product need & nurture
📢 Marketing: Cluster-based demand gen, feature in content
🤝 Sales: multi-touch, 30% effort (progressive profiling, connect with buying committee, trigger-based engagement, invite to ABM events...)
📊 Opportunity likelihood: <30%

3. ACTIVE FOCUS 
= Vendor aware + Product need evidence strong

🎯 Goal: Sales opportunities
📢 Marketing: Personalized content, interviews, gifting
🤝 Sales: 1:1, 60% effort (multi-threaded engagement, personalized offers, strategy sessions...)
📊 Opportunity likelihood: High

----

The impact when you align your playbooks to this routing:
→ SDRs stop wasting time on unaware accounts
→ Stop irrelevant personalization 
→ Ad spend has higher returns
→ Marketing-sourced revenue increases
→ You build future pipeline while accelerating this quarter's deals

Industry-based ABM v.s. Use Case-Based ABM. 

If your product has multiple use cases, stop targeting industry verticals, and start targeting clusters.

VERTICAL-BASED ABM 

Most ABM programs create vertical-based list, messaging and content. 

But if those accounts have different use-cases and challenges, you risk ending with content and messaging that's either: 
- Irrelevant to the majority of accounts you target
- Generic, “common denominator” messaging that doesn’t differentiate you and doesn’t address the highest priority need

CLUSTER-BASED ABM

Cluster: group of companies with a similar challenge/use-case, despite their tier or vertical.

With cluster targeting you can:

- Cut through the generic noise with messaging, content and case studies that address the highest priority need that's top of their mind
- Differentiate in a way that matters to them (by showing how you're supporting that use-case better than competitors)
- Focus on accounts with a high probability to become a sales opportunity instead of just chasing vertical Tier 1 accounts

EXAMPLE 

As an ABM lead for Hubspot, I might create an ABM program for B2B SaaS companies. After all, they all need sales and marketing tools. It’s also helpful to have industry related assets, case studies and messaging. 

But different SaaS companies have different buying triggers: 

- Switching from a legacy system, because they lack functionality and integrations
- Companies that want to start ABM but their CRM/marketing platform don’t support it
- Startups that outgrew their separate siloed tools

You can already see how each of these use-cases deserves completely different messaging. 

---

Once you've defined the clusters, the next step is mapping accounts to them.

Here is how.

1. Export all your won deals and segment them by use-case

2. Group all accounts by use-case and compare revenue metrics 

- Revenue
- Average deal size 
- Sales cycle length
- Lifetime value 
- # of successful case studies 

You'll be able to make an unbiased decision which clusters have a higher priority.

3. Select a top cluster aligned with your goals and run deal analysis 
- Top 5 clients by LTV/ACV
- Top 5 fastest deals
- Recent 5 lost deals

4. Extract patterns

- Firmographics
- Technographics
- Buying committee structure
- Won and lost reasons
- Signals and account insights that signal the specific use-case

5. Develop a cluster ICP with qualification & disqualification criteria

--- 

Now you can build a highly targeted list of accounts that are more likely to convert into pipeline and be a good fit, and align your program with their high priority needs. 

We recently published results and a breakdown of four programs where a switch to cluster-based ABM generated $7 million in pipeline: 
https://lnkd.in/dZWKNAbC

What's marketing role in sales outreach and engagement?

A VP at Snowflake got this question at a sales summit:
"How can a rep get your attention with cold outreach?"

His answer: "You can't."

"I don't trust cold outreach. But if someone I trust vouches for the solution, I'll take a look."

This is the reality for most enterprise buyers.

They ignore cold outreach, skip your ads, filter out your nurture emails.

But they listen to their team, peers and trusted industry voices.

That's why your ABM team can't just target buyers.
(and why marketing needs to own part of the engagement)

Here's how to engage the entire ecosystem around your buyers:

1. Peer-to-peer multithreading

The other day I heard from a VP of Sales: "it's hard for a young SDR to get the attention from a senior executive".

Their solution? Their CEO and CMO regularly share thought leadership insight on LinkedIn, and book senior executives as guests on on their podcast.

2. Non-decision makers with influence

Back to the Snowflake VP: "The best way to get my attention is to have my team bring something to me."

Executives rarely care about the tactical problem your product solves.

Here's how it works: A power user experiences a problem daily (e.g. losing candidates to poor hiring experience). That problem impacts a business objective the executive does care about (e.g. slowing market expansion).

You engage the power user. They bring it to their boss when the problem comes up. 

3. Industry peers

People trust their peers more than they trust vendors.

Our buyers mention they discovered our content because someone from their network engaged or shared it. Often someone who will never buy from us.

The more you're present and connect to people from the industry, the more your brand or content get recommended.

4. Industry voices 

These can be leaders in renown companies, leaders from technology partners, or even local "micro-influencers" known in a city or a region.

We regularly host partner webinars, local partner events in target locations, and run an annual summit with people respected by our buyers. 

5. Niche media and communities

Event organizers, industry media companies, communities and podcasts. 

♜ Arthur Castillo shared: "The best community sponsorships weren't standard packages. They were custom programs: co-hosting research, integrated campaigns, or bringing community members to our dinners in key cities."

--- 

Cold sales outreach won't get you in the door with senior buyers.

But when the whole team builds relationships across the ecosystem, you become known, and increase the chance of ending up in their consideration set.  

That's the shift: marketing isn't just generating leads and providing air cover.

Marketing creates trust, presence, and recommendations in the networks your buyers already rely on.

P.S. Andrei Zinkevich and me are breaking down the role of marketing in ABM on our next Full-Funnel Live: 
https://bit.ly/48azQnB

Why do sales ignore marketing? 

I many orgs, sales ignore 
- marketing leads
- content
- webinars 
...

Sales don't buy in for joint programs like ABM, and gate-keep access to customers. 

In many orgs, marketing cannot even access the CRM. 

Why? 

1. Self-perpetuating lack of trust 

From sales' perspective, marketing activities don't seem relevant for their quota. 

Many have tried collaborating without results: leads that never respond, campaigns with no pipeline. 

So they stop giving marketing a chance. But no B2B program works without collaboration. 

And so the vicious circle perpetuates.

2. No skin in the game 

Marketing campaigns are often not tied to revenue. 

Sales have quota pressure and outbound KPIs. Any new program feels like a burden that distracts from their primary goal. 

This goes even more extreme when sales miss their revenue quota, while marketing celebrates hitting MQLs.

3. Self-perpetuating lack of customer knowledge 

Content made for sales gets ignored by them as it seems irrelevant. 

This happens when marketers don't have in depth, first-hand customer knowledge.

But unless sales provide this insight, or facilitate access to customers, this problems perpetuates, too. 

4. Not understanding what sales need 

Most marketers don't interview sales about their priorities and challenges. 

But without showing how our programs can help with top priority challenges, they seem irrelevant. 

5. Lack of clarity 

Most marketing initiative get rejected because of one reason:

Lack of clarity.

E.g. if we want sales to engage buyers of a target account: 
- Validate: is it a good fit and are signals and engagement this account shows relevant?
- What exactly do we expect them to do? Ideally, plan the actions together: what exactly should sales (and what will marketing do)
- How these activities lead to sales meetings, pipeline and revenue

But even that won't work, if we don't solve the next one: 

6. Naive approach to change management 

Have you ever seen anyone change just because you asked them to? 

I've seen many marketers create playbooks, content, messaging and just expect sales to use them. 

People change when they
- recognize the current approach isn’t working
- the problem is worth solving
- see a clear, achievable path forward

And in case of sales, they believe demonstrated results by other sales people much more than any presentation. 

--- 

How to fix this:

- Make both functions revenue-responsible
- Get fundamental alignment on GTM strategy (ICP, buyer journey, value prop, metrics)
- Fix knowledge gaps through joint planning, involvement of SMEs
- Define a small pilot team (1 marketer + 1 SDR) on one market/vertical
- Run regular pipeline review meetings during the pilot
- Document and share results before scaling

--- 

Tomorrow Andrei Zinkevich and I will go live to share simple solutions to fix marketing and sales collaboration:

https://lnkd.in/duEsttZ2

Do reps even matter, if 80% B2B buyers buy from vendors they preferred BEFORE contact with sales? 

Here's what Jon Miller says (quoting Kerry Cunningham's update of 6sense's B2B Buyer Experience Report for 2025):  

1. SALES RELATIONSHIPS AS BRAND AWARENESS 

Reps are a critical part of building your brand preference and awareness. 68% of buyers *personally knew a seller* from the winning company before the buying process began (Kerry’s research).

We see this over and over again. The teams who involve salespeople early in the buying process always see way better results from their programs. 

2. PREVIOUS VENDOR EXPERIENCE > BRAND AWARENESS

95% of net-new wins came from *existing vendor relationships* - not just brand awareness. 

For new business deals: 
- 48% already bought from that vendor
- 13% used the vendor at a prior company
- 34% evaluated the vendor (but didn't buy)

And get this: less than 5% had no direct experience but were familiar with the brand.

The disheartening conclusion here: our efforts to build a brand have a very small effect (5%). 

Category leaders - companies with the biggest market share - have an enormous advantage. 

But what should the rest of us do? 

Jon's advice: 
✅ Hire sellers with experience selling to your core ICP
✅ Give them time and air cover to build relationships outside active buying cycles
✅ When you lose a deal, make sure you have complete notes, named champions, mapped stakeholders, and a clear path to reconsideration. Because that "loss" might be the reason you win the next opportunity

I'd add: 

☑ Double down on expansion and renewal programs 

And practically, in your net-new programs: 

PRIORITIZE accounts with: 
☑ Buyers who are a former customer 
☑ Existing relationships 

INCREASE "RELATIONSHIPS AS BRAND AWARENESS" by:
☑ Letting sellers work on future pipeline and relationships, too
☑ Increasing the footprint in target accounts by multithreading 
☑ Involve non-sellers (your subject-matter experts, executives...) with industry connections 

MEASURE:
☑ Don't only measure revenue from won deals, but also relationships, target account footprint, and ALL qualified net-new opportunities (remember: lost opportunities account for 34% of future won deals). 

Because, as Jon puts it, the deals you win next quarter were decided 6 months ago.

ABM ≠ industry & persona personalization. This misses: 
- Actions matching buyer intent & awareness
- Progressive discovery & personalization 

Here's a framework that shows this more clearly. 

1. Level of intent (vertical axis)

- TAM*:  Any company that could potentially use your solution (e.g. My HR solution is used by companies 200+ employees)
- ICP*:  Companies matching your ideal profile (e.g. 200+ people tech companies who are actively hiring)
- Cluster: Priority segment with competitive advantage (e.g. SaaS companies with distributed dev teams, hiring remote developers)
- Need:  Validated problem that needs solving
- Buying: High-priority, can't postpone, actively looking for solutions

(* yes, I know that strictly speaking "TAM" and "ICP" are about fit, rather than intent - but look at my drawing skills, do you think I could draw a 3D diagram?)


2. Level of awareness (horizontal axis)

- Cold: No awareness of your solution
- Aware: Know what you do, no relationship yet
- Relationship: Active back & forth conversation
- Meeting: Discovery calls with buying committee members


3. Aligning actions w/ level of intent and awareness

ANY + TAM → Qualify. Do they fit our ICP?
COLD + ICP → Create awareness
AWARE + ICP → Research to uncover cluster and account insights
AWARE + Cluster → Build relationships, start progressive discovery
RELATIONSHIP + ICP or Cluster → Validate the need through progressive discovery
RELATIONSHIP + Need → Book discovery calls
MEETINGS BOOKED → Discover needs, priorities, stakeholders. Create the opportunity.

(In practice, we use a simpler framework with three lists:
- Cluster ICP: Researched accounts, unaware, unknown need. Goal: create awareness.
- Future Pipeline: Vendor aware, need unknown. Goal: validate need and build relationships.
- Active Focus: Validated need, established relationship. Goal: book discovery calls and create opportunities.)


4. Progressive discovery and personalization 

By progressive discovery, I mean: 
- Account research 
- Progressively gathering insider information, challenges and priorities shared by target buyers via
→ Content collabs
→ Webinar polls/Q&As/registration forms
→ Social and email conversations
→ Transcribed interviews and calls

With each new insight, personalization becomes better. 

--- 

The mistake? Assuming that industry and persona personalization is enough. 

In reality
- Same industry ≠ same challenges. Relevant personalization requires deeper insight 
- Most relevant insights come from buyer conversations 
- Outreach by unknown people gets ignored even when relevant

"We struggle with 1:1 and 1:Few ABM. We just can't figure out personalization at scale" - VP of Marketing shared on a call (and was laid off a week after). 

Here's the brutal reality in many B2B orgs:

- Teams pressured to "personalize at scale"
- Any "non-scalable" approach is disregarded
- Teams deploy AI research and/or AI SDRs
- Every prospect receives a "uniquely irrelevant message" (Jon Miller)

Teams get blamed. Leaders let go.

Why? 

Because they MISUNDERSTAND what personalization is.

Personalization ≠ "{first}, {some unique insight / signal}" followed by a pitch asking for a call. 

ABM personalization = matching account insights with individual buyer needs across the buying journey.

Here's how we go from manual personalization to personalization at scale.

1. Pick an engaged strategic account

Together with an experienced AE, define:
- Key questions and information you need to know about this account 
- Sources and platforms where you can find that information 
- Run an actual research on that account 

Save as an example of high-quality output.

2. Train AI with proper input

- Deep insights and research about the target ICP segment
- Always request quotes to prevent hallucination and preserve buyer language
- Give AI detailed prompt describing the research questions and sources 
- Show it what 'good looks like' with the example of high-quality output to use as a quality benchmark

3. Make account research a joint responsibility

AI research is complemented by:
- RevOps input on buying signals, engagement and intent data
- Marketing research of industry trends and competitive landscape
- SDRs research of the buying committee, and recent role changes

4. Include insider information 

The deepest insights you gain only from 1-1 conversations.

SDRs and AEs run regular 1-1 engagements with buyers to build relationships, understand where they are in the buyer journey, and their current needs.

5. Create a 360° account view

Create a holistic account dashboard with all collected insights.

6. Create account-specific content, not "personalized templates"

Match content with the buyer journey stages, buyer persona, and current needs.

Sales distributes it manually to target buyers and listen to their feedback.

Save successful examples validated by the buyers (with responses, engagement and calls). 

7. Feed the proven formats to your AI model to replicate them in the future. 

You'll then only need to polish and customize it.

Same principles: deep insight + playbook as prompt + quotes + quality benchmark. 
---
Personalization at scale is only possible when there is a proven playbook in place.

The only way to create the process and quality output benchmarks is MANUAL first. When you see what works, you can scale it with AI.

But it requires JOINT marketing and sales work, not just pushing your VP of marketing to find a solution to "personalization at scale".

Customer interviews are overrated. 
Use progressive discovery instead. 


1. Turn natural touchpoints into progressive discovery

Customer interviews = conversations you have with your customers, from the moment they are prospect through the whole lifecycle. 

→ First sales calls with prospects
→ Business case building with your champion 
→ Demos & discussions with other buyers 
→ The moment someone signs 
→ Onboarding sessions with new customers
→ Quarterly business reviews with existing accounts
→ Support tickets and feature requests

Even: conversations you have with prospects and customers on industry events. 

Where you make a difference: 

2. Ask the right questions at the right time

Good conversations always focus on their world, and ask the right question at the right time. 

E.g. 

- Business triggers, problems, how did they discover you → initial discovery 
- Cost of doing nothing → business case building
- Purchase criteria → consensus building & demos with users and buyers 
- Why us → when they sign 
- Value → post onboarding, reviews 
- General "out of buying cycle" topics → buyer research, customer events, social... 

3. Systematically process and develop customer insights

Interviews ≠ Insights. 

Record, transcribe, structure and process the input to get to real insight. 

Regularly review the insight and updates with the team. 

4. Turn the insight into action

Insights ≠ Actions. 

Lots of teams collect insight, and only use it to update their copy. 

You can do much more. Refine targeting, qualification and disqualification criteria, account research process, content strategy, buyer enablement... 

5. Voice of customer

Use their actual words. 

Not your positioning deck. Their language. Their pain points. Their priorities. 

--- 

Thank you Patrick Cumming  for starting this discussion. 

Patrick's workflow is brilliant: mine first sales call transcripts, extract the top 5-7 pains/gains, use their exact words in your ads.
He saw a 40% lift in SQLs with the SAME budget. Just "using their exact words to build ad content". 

Bottom line: customer research is not a project.

It's an essential, evergreen process that includes progressive discovery, structured insight collection and review, and continuously refining your GTM as the market and your understanding of it evolves.

taplio

The Battle

Patrick Cumming

Vladimir Blagojević

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScorePatrick Cumming's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreVladimir Blagojević's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Patrick Cumming

Vladimir Blagojević

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Patrick Cumming's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreVladimir Blagojević's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScorePatrick Cumming's LinkedIn Performance